It is with the support of my colleagues at Women for Equity in Theatre that I am writing to you. With this letter, we choose to speak out today to reject the indictment perpetrated against two women theatre workers unjustly convicted and imprisoned in Russia: Yevgenia Berkovitch and Svetlana Petriïtchouk, respectively a director and a playwright.
On the very first day of the war in Ukraine, on February 24, 2022, Yevgenia Berkovich was arrested and then released for organizing a protest against the invasion. The first Russian theater personality to openly oppose the conflict, she was forced to close her Facebook page after feeling persistent threats in response to her anti-war poems.
The play for which she was imprisoned with the author Svetlana Petriïtchouk is called Finish is a valiant falcon. Performed entirely by women, the play tells the story of Russian women recruited online by Islamists to join them in Syria and marry them. Critically acclaimed, the play received two Golden Masks in 2022, the main theatre award in Russia.
Berkovitch and Petriychuk said they staged the play to prevent terrorism, which is completely contrary to the accusation of “justifying terrorism” that they face, for which they completely deny guilt.
In Russia, a petition calling for their release and proclaiming their innocence, launched by the independent newspaper Novaya Gazetahas already been signed by thousands of people including Dmitry Muratov, 2021 Nobel Peace Prize winner and editor-in-chief of the Russian investigative media.
In the cultural world, artists who criticize Vladimir Putin are prosecuted, fired or forced into exile. Evgenia Berkovitch is a former student and collaborator of Kirill Serebrennikov, a film and stage director known for his works critical of Russian power, now in exile in Germany.
Mr. Serebrennikov had denounced the accusation of apologizing for terrorism against the two artists, considering it to be the opposite of what is defended in the play.
Svetlana Petriychuk and Yevgenia Berkovitch, aged 44 and 39 respectively, were sentenced on July 8 to six years in a penal colony in Russia for producing Finist is a valiant falcon.
The indictment states that they “had a criminal intent and decided to write a play that would create an attractive image of terrorism in the viewer.” Berkovitch and Petriychuk completely deny this accusation.
This harsh condemnation confirms the intensification of repression against any voice critical of the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin.
We are neither journalists nor historians. We are women of theatre from Quebec in Canada and as playwrights, performers and directors, we want to express our deepest indignation against the imprisonment of two Russian women of theatre who are against the war, seeking only to represent the world as they perceive it through their works and their creativity.
We demand their immediate release.